Bathroom Blitz! Part III: The pre-party

Disappointingly, my bathroom is still intact. In another day or so, we’ll know Chris’s work schedule for August and then we’ll be able to pin down the date. Three dates, to be precise, all in a row, that are not Wednesdays, preferably towards the beginning of the month, when friends and family are able to provide childcare support services. Those three magical days — if they occur — those will be The Blitz.

If they occur.

You know what the hardest part about this waiting is? Not starting another project. Also, not starting this project. Doesn’t the universe know that I’m a very busy adult with many important things to do? And that THE CLOCK IS TICKING??

In order to keep myself from starting another room (like the baby’s room maybe? Which I’m going to need in like, two months here? But I’m not freaking out or anything), I’ve been wracking my brain to find Blitz-related projects that I can do pre-Blitz, in the hopes of making the whole thing go faster once this ill-conceived shenanigan actually gets underway.

So, the trim is done and ready for install.

It’s been resized, glued, and painted. From my experience the last time I did this, that process should have been at least a moderate-sized pain in the ass. But perhaps because I’m so much more skilled at ill-conceived shenanigans now, it barely even qualified as a mild pain in the ass. It only took 3 days’ worth of naptimes with a couple of after-bedtime glue-ups.

Dear god, apparently I keep track of time in Mom-units now. Ugh.

I got all that done in 6-7 hours of real, actual work. For those of you whose world is not defined by the number of times my kid goes to bed in a given number of days.

Also in the last two weeks, I built a vanity.

Well, mostly. And “built” is a strong word. I fortified my soul and made the trip back to IKEA to get the vanity, sink, and faucets. (They were out of faucets this time though, so I’m still not done with that Swedish caricature of the American dream). Came home with a 75-lb sink that I had to haul up three flights of stairs by myself, and three to four hours of assembly to help channel my waiting-for-the-Blitz anxiety.

But alas, these two projects only took a little more than a week to complete, which means I eventually found myself casting about for something else to keep the pre-Blitz party going. And somehow I landed on drywall repair. It’s time consuming, and since we’re only renovating the bottom half of the bathroom, I should be able to repair the top half ahead of time. All of which makes sense until you realize that there isn’t any drywall repair that needs to be done.

Yet.

But if I take the casings off the door and window, history tells me there’s going to be damage.

And there’s no reason I can’t take the casings off now. Except for that thing about not wanting to live with demolition or open walls for any longer than absolutely necessary, which was the whole impetus for the 3-day Blitz timeline in the first place.

But removing the casings is just a little bit of demo. I mean, we lived with open walls in our kitchen and dining room for like, 8 months.

And last summer there were several weeks when we had a crater in front of our front door instead of a porch.

So the precedent for living with demo in conspicuous areas has been set. We may even have an unusually high tolerance for it. So I was like, I’ll take off the casings. I’ll repair the drywall. And then, after the lower half of the bathroom is rebuilt during the Blitz, we can go straight to paint and skip all that time-consuming repair work. Which would be really nice.

So I got out my pry bars and my utility knife and other assorted casing-removal accoutrements, found a likely entry point, and started demo-ing.

This is how far I got.

And then I saw the inside of our walls, and I was like, ew. I can’t believe we lived with that in our kitchen for 8 months.

Of course, we cleaned up the kitchen as we worked, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. I thought, maybe if I vacuumed out this wall cavity after taking the casing off, I could live with it.

But it was 9pm, and Rowan was sleeping on the other side of the bathroom wall, and I didn’t want to risk waking her up with the vacuum.

Comments

We’ve been renovating for 17 months. So tired of it. Working on back yard reno now. Only major item to complete are 9 cabinet doors – from oak to satin finish shite then granite installation AND master bath.

Just read practically every one of your posts. What a journey you have had with this house. And now another member of your family. I send all good wishes and prayers for you!

Your blog is also very inspiring. I am having an inspection on my third house in a row this week after problems with the other two I had made offers on. I am so stressed about all of this. The first two I loved and for very different reasons had to let go. The first for location but it was in perfect condition. The second was a good location but the inspection found out it literally was about to fall down. Now this one I kinda don’t care if I get it or not probably in self defense because I really loved the second one architecturally. Sigh